poetic justice
8
4.9
- noun
- /poʊˈɛtɪk ˈdʒʌstɪs/
- Literature
:
justicia poética
- The villain's downfall felt like poetic justice as he lost everything he had worked for after betraying his friends.
But for the villains, there should be this poetic justice so that whatever evil thing they did to the hero, the same should be done to them.
- But for the villains, there should be this poetic justice so that whatever evil thing they did to the hero, the same should be done to them.
- You know, when Nemesis occurs, we think of that as kind of poetic justice and we feel a sense of, of things being set the way they ought to be.
- Sort of like a poetic justice kind of thing, that he dies in a boat way the way Tanya did, and maybe the boat is close to shore, that's why we hear the bang, bang, bang.
Examples
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For his part, Bill McKibben says that if there were any poetic justice, the storm would be named Hurricane Chevron or Hurricane Exxon.
Blog text (5) -
Even if he could not, we can appreciate the poetic justice of that outcome.
Academic text (1991) -
I just think it's poetic justice, right?
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I suppose some might call it poetic justice.
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I suppose it's poetic justice.
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It's a classic case of poetic justice.
Blog text (11) -
Let's call it poetic justice.
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Seeing the Ark finally being opened and destroying those who wanted to use it for evil was poetic justice.
Blog text (17) -
Years later, I chortled gleefully at the poetic justice of my return as an assistant professor to replace that advisor who had been denied tenure.
Fiction book (1993) -
Third, I would point out that, unfortunate as the situation is, there is a kind of poetic justice at work in that the latest trends that I have addressed in this article are beginning to give way to a newer (or should I say older?) issue.
Academic text (1992)
Synonyms
11
9.1
A punishment someone deserves for bad actions
1
7.7
A punishment or reward a person should get
Antonyms
How Fitting
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'poetic' (artful, expressive) + 'justice' (fairness) signal an artful or specially fitting kind of justice, so there is a visible compositional link. However, the idiomatic nuance—an outcome that is appropriately or ironically fitting—relies on metaphor and pragmatic inference that a B1 learner who only knows the words may not fully derive. Cross-linguistic calques exist which may help, but the precise ironic/fitting sense is not wholly predictable.
Etymology
Poetic justice comes from stories and plays that give a neat, fitting end, like a line of poetry. Because poetic means 'like a poem' and justice means 'a fitting punishment or reward', the phrase means 'an ending where good is rewarded and bad is punished'.